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And then. Apuleius virtues and vices become civic rather than The gods give way to magic. the thunder god Er. pretentious incapacity. This Er turns up in funeral and explained the process of metempsychosis. who when his heroic age is over will learn to sit by a house and a his wick in his wick. self-indulgence. tragic man to a concern for the between man ship between god and relationship into the lands and society. to speed up literary his and Tartarin tory to a blur. But Diane Wakoski's review admiring it points also toward the urgency these be (Let a which affirmation!) present word of mythic
sequences.
poetic
CRITICISM
/ GUY
DAVENPORT
Joyces Forest of Symbols
mirror we learn that we can all be artists by turning a In Book X of the Republic in the first chapter of Ulysses. of seeing.dreck
of one's
own
life?its
ness?toward the condition is in fact a double gesture: trayals and angers become
so often animates her own
pain. Pickwick 79
. like Buck Mulligan came to life at his own and that a man named Er. Joyce wearing Fenn calls him. the son of Armenius. and his own business. Hurdlebury and other attendants of their own obsequies. The hero of the Aegean comes in Athens the center of his nobility rather than a man who places his literature the nobility at the center of events. and we know him by the company he keeps. scapegraces and Petronius. that in witnessing says he saw Orpheus choose to return as a swan. choose to be a private citizen minding Ulysses his that he had made Vico could have advised Ulysses Giambattista in harmony with choice the course of history. In the truest genius of Roman like the charming of hero becomes the privileged spectator. as his Not until Sancho Panza begins to be as interesting metempsychotic master is the age of heroes really over. "Airmienious" the mask of his namesake. the children of Sancho emerge as Mr. and be souls ready for reincarnation known as Earwicker. round and round. fused with Finnegans Wake quarrelers with Fate. can locate Bloom We epic be by other roads. Ajax choose to be a lion. for the age of heroes and as the age of the common man just gods kings gives way to the age of the had given way to that of heroes and kings. Arminius and Comenius. civilized enough to have lamp. This Finneganish Er. Yet the hero remains a hero. and literature shifts from its concern for the relation and individual. whether venturing of faery or into hell and purgatory.

the mountain the genitive gorse that grows in the nostrils of the is descended from which Bloom and the heroic barbarity giant Finnegan. prose people fifty years ago gave intelligent Yeats could not read it. Shaw. the minds von Flotow. university. come alive in due season and place. persisting. the paralysis the bright Tragic grief: of Homer. Polyphemus still drunk and throw still seeking his home. several plies deep. it. and can share with him method sible only after we have mastered Joyce's the tragic grief and comic fury that charge every word. products by enthusiasm. Ulysses our hearts us If tragedy educates against pain. has been more aware of its place No book. We feel the charm of the matter and the quicken. enthusiasts thence to the ultimate Bouvard Bartholom?e Fran?ois Denys that the verities are not on and Juste Romain Cyrille P?cuchet. unless that reflects better time. or on a throne. followed Stately. the events of history rather. which trouble. like seeds. the mythic itself within is pos the words. the ironic in the to disclose the tragic. the ear of das. or rather is a poem inside a novel. the charm
tion. reau of Statistics and the or in their the encyclopedia. So complex a fusion a itself in all its darkness of am of meanings becomes picture of meaning its ironic duplicity. equivalent fourth age of Vico has arrived. Joyce's dead frog's heart.
serious readers feel that they have by now mastered the prose. puffs the winds insofar as they have survived. of da Vinci and Edison. the virtue of Epameinon sanity and comprehensive forgiveness the ministry of Christ. which images. two adjectives the book begins. With thus fixed. Ezra Pound's Lewis misread interest longed over its Flaubertian soon waned after an initial excitement qualities. refined away). Oolysaze said his title. modifying Most 80
. Wells. we must learn to suffer the ridiculous To read these multiple images image in the trivial. ing things.are who of metempsychosis and de Tarasc?n. We our attention can work its transforma manner. Thomas Mann to read it. the Sirens of flexibility held up for comparison Comic with fury: the advantages that a history containing of Dublin. the ancient symbols still at their station. Ulysses projects all its images transparently upon other im over other in turn He transparently ages. Ulysses in it is Don Quijote. Thomas Wolfe and Wyndham Virginia Woolf. by plump. has come to this. is more a poem than a novel. who believe or in the club arm of a Hercules. and the man of acumen The feeds the in all of trade. and its triumphant articulation of dead symbols biguity. and comedy makes good art acts like Galvani's current to the electrical touched natured. you watch poignant. as they have survived?the prehistoric triple legs of the Manx arms. Reading You do not read Ulysses. but in the Bu Olympus. and participates printing press with matter. to signify that symbols. a pronunciation (so Joyce of Ulex.

the other longs for ebullience. studied for what we might call the Kells effect. for the fabulous can be an cow of the ficial cows like the fabulous beginning?"anybody artist by turning a mirror round and round"). Stephen. yield the word that ends the imps. usurped by disorder. Stately.one Buck shaves every day. day?
and wine
coronation. Mulligan two words. whose kings. He growls at Stephen in the ritual lion of north) greeting at a feast of milk and and presides eucha the Mithraic Mithraics. these plump: a than the symbolic content of illuminated larger purpose lettering serving its decoration of geometry. depressed.
Coronation
And it is the putatively the spirit-stealing stately Hal who must dismiss are Falstaff before he can be a kingly man. ready to scrutinize first chapter. Hamlet's plight. and is thus pictured giance aspirant to Mithraic 81
. plump for plebians. gan rough a mirror and razor lie on which them. Leopold. whose processes of light. melancholy. and west. who. course were in the rection. Molly's ambiguous arti artificer at the end made circular. omitting Dublin (to the in his blessing. as is the Portrait. Behind Hal and Falstaff Every man and Misrule. and the mirror with which the priest of Mithra flashed tidings of the sun to bless the earth: south. we are we can see that When the Kells decoration. crossed is in fact intoning is not the Christian the opening of the Latin mass. builds the chapter around a spectacle of authority Joyce plight. O. longs and does not long for Mulligan's Stephen euphoric and pagan alle as an to the age's ?lan vital. god but the playfully had placed on the face of the Zeitgeist. Telemachus' to Mulli stands in contrast ineffectual. won't we have Drinking
On
a merry beer. or as we can say. and serpentine through the zodiac symbolized ancient world as a Kronos with a lion's head. honey. wears robe of the Mithraic the yellow and carries hierophant Mulligan the sperm of a slain bull. s The one has power and spirit. daily resur Zoroaster's god Ahura-Mazda. on the Mithraic rist. Stately is an adjec the whole stately and plump encapsulate tive for Skeat. Mulligan bearing his bowl of lather a priest. Shavian god whose mask Nietzsche the sun. And all this is happening of the sixteenth sabbath. but the god whose altar he approaches. like Scipio Africanus. and signs. the razor with which the sacrificial bowl containing he slew.
time
whisky. is but eloquent yes ( so that Ulysses like the Wake book. The etymologist dictionary for the Dedalus carried in his pocket gives "rude and clownish" Stephen connotation of It is the plump Falstaff who sings original plump. east. every month.

ror in these three Chris threatened the three forces which most chapters in its in Rome. but affairs are upside-down and must be righted. should therefore The Telemachiad and Joyce chose to mir must therefore be extra-biblical. They comedy. however. of course. As in a Mulligan are not. are not linear are a network. correspondences. the chivalry variety. Stephen's Stephen in calls him Caliban. the process of righting has begun when the novel ends. No knot in the network was to be left untied. cation of Islam "Araby" But 82 in
is a kind
of Caliban
. for it makes knowledge to the opening but an aesthete. to an Irish parish priest. of Wilde's. though Mulligan. in the first chapter can be accounted The Mithraic for. diligence is one. correspondences in the fourth chapter. in the first chapter leads to an The tension between Stephen and Mulligan is he who would "The sentimentalist ineffectual enjoy without telegram: for a thing done. the immense seek to enjoy reality without that sentimentalists incurring error is useful to our for a thing done: Freudian debtorship Stephen's him define not a sentimentalist of his character. burner of hayricks. as the childish narra ters. Lion of God. of correspondences. borrowing Correspondences this first chapter are frequently has the pagan name. marriage notice that the first three stories of Dubliners To our surprise we might answer to this same there is a vision of Persia in "The Sis correspondence: and the old priest's sin is not simony." This is from Mere the immense debtorship incurring and what Squire Feverel wrote was dith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. a witticism
havoc with playing be Ariel. and the is obvious. Ariel. I am the boy can enjoy
That
Invisibility
?that But is. topsy-turvy: Stephen is the pagan. they Joyce's correspondences parallels. chapters of The Ordeal see Richard and the Zoroastrian.the stages of initiation being distributed the through symbolically one can espy the Mithraic With and perspicacity orders: chapter. the barbaric the rivalry of Mithraism tianity: early years of chivalry and Christianity. Ariel also. and of Richard Feverel fire-worshipper it seems. The degree of lionhood is concealed orders. After Bloom appears there is a Biblical scheme of linked together Old and New Testaments typologically. Go back. that face his arms is Mulligan's gilded with marmalade flapping in a song: another." a sin tor has misheard. for Mulligan melancholia. Stephen has Ariel's soul and Caliban s status. and the struggle with Islam. but sod scarcely available evo is the Wild West in "An Encounter" omy.

is Beth. a to signal to us that this Hely. The background of this chap and is a charm against drowning. con o? de vivants piliers I Laissent Baudelaire's parfois sortir de temple fuses paroles. implying which and the pattern of correspondences of each determine the number Solomon's is. which makes The
convenience. Greek for forest. writing A good rule for solving Joycean riddles is to go direct with letters for titles. that the forest of symbolic trees.
difficult and an
is sacred to Manann?n third is Nion. the ash. chapters? as the letters of the Greek as many has twenty-four. ter is the sea. does Ulysses have eighteen The questions. one of such antiquity it possible for Joyce to strike a great chord of corre properties. it is a tree propitious such as starting tories. supported chapter. who must it is a most appropriate house in order and go in quest of a good daimon.can search along the network of symbolic correspondences by asking for instance. for purification. city tree which The fourth is Fearn. or alder. published by Roderic O'Flaherty. Stephen. its struggle is with the shapelessness of water and with aqua of thought.
which 83
protects
one from charms. Here Homer's alder for the alder of the Irish those correspondences. we once considered learn in the Proteus books chapter. an anagram of hyle. which alpha that its letters are the names of trees with magic bet. symbol. in 1793 by the Reverend and translated into English James Hely. antiquarian.
swers. and as Bloom's back-garden by spearmint. For Hamlet-Telemachus-Ariel-Stephen. That name. set his out on a quest. Ogygian one believe that God designed the world for Joyce's alphabet. Hely. is named Wisdom. like the seven trees which tabernacle. or wanted wanted Joyce symbol a stationer. as was hidden tects island magic Calypso's by ringed alder is Eden is one of trees. of a symbol. which compels demons is made This second chapter of questions up entirely questions. to answer The second is Luis. in this case will render up an Irish ly to the Irish connection. the branches The first letter of the Irish alphabet of which the bounds evil spirits and are used for beating of terri expel to inceptions. as a sustained laire's for?t des symboles of symbols over his transparency One
novel.
as Bloom
. the birch tree. and thus place Baude Irish alphabet spondences. the circling confines and pro a sanctuary. Why. wanders through on many as if carried by ad men of peristaltic Ulysses signboards gait.
or willow.
in a book with the serendipitously Homeric Joyce found this alphabet in Latin in 1785 title Ogygia.
The
fifth
is Saille. Poseidon. the rowan. making to trees to Greek epic. which the Celtic McLir. Odyssey alphabet.

either). or dwarf elder. seasons. gantism 84 to the vine. for instance. the minimally Uterate prophylactic the recita magic. the oak. IOU. is the in which Bloom is most deft with words.must This
be protected from the narcosis of the lotus which drugs this chapter. windy The eighth is Tinne. so knight and the holly knight. the ivy. but in the language of Mediterranean George Russell. the convivial The eleventh companion the scene is the Ormond Hotel Bar. which gives one the power is sulfurous with ritual curses. with liberal help from Bacchus. the oak tree's twin and rival. The willow tently prophetic. the Gorgon Zola? inspection to curse. and full of doors. the symbolism of which is Bacchic. the grapevine. A strange seems to say that the cannibalistic and involuted symbolism here Lestrygon ians are the abuse of the mouth as a door inward to the as in the pre body the tongue is in windy rhetoric the door outward from the ceding chapter and that as the oak and holly vie for the rule of the year. makes arrows its Rabelaisian and for gi
. Maia. I am in debt to you. the tree of the weather and the door of the the equinoxes and solstices. tenth is Muin. the always decapitating belly our senses and sense. or around. Joyce symbol wandering scenes which to him the microcosmic and this suggested crisscross each it is sacred to Osiris. and this is the Aeolus chapter. mainly the houses of both upon chapter Aristotle and Plato. who. in the season when the hawthorn. One of the darker curses is dilettantes not easy to detect. as it is concealed in an awful pun: AE. and the Osiris of Ulysses. with Sirens and music. tion of the vowels in order. with of language. and particularly the care of literature in the hands upon of precious and refined librarians. retort to the Devil. the wood of which slaying giants. which blooms Hermes leads the dead to Hades. Corny Kelleher that the alphabet the vine is not native to Ireland isn't. This chapter is the burial of Paddy Dignam. The seventh is Duir. that is. The vine has a varied symbolism: is here. and since the undertaker. and is sacred to the Psychopompos god dess of the dead. or hazel. The twelfth is Peith. in large part to the paralysis of the island. (suggesting The Joyce wraps his darkly satirical and bitter spiral around the alien force of has contributed the British governor. like the oak body. when winds their direction. for why should Bloom in this most of decapitating Zolaesque eat our if Joyce were not Perseus-like up for chapters gorgonzola holding
the head of his false twin. other. is Gort. and voice vie to debauch Certainly Joyce does some of his own. and inadver chapter is the tree. seems to have taken the to be a spiral. the holly. and this is the Polyphemus chapter. change as as a canyon. This The ninth is Coll. one the other. poet's The sixth is Uath.

and a is the sun's to begin the year. Stephen undergoes
for a metanoia. of nature provided Vico showed Joyce bounty how to make grand linguistic chords by looking at the forest-floor existence in primal words of man that are still spoken today completely of drained their original meaning. the elder. The fifteenth
the furze. picking to legere from the ilex.
is Ura. giving Joyce the number of chapters is more than just another pattern could write. as the with the word sports spokes. gathering. This is the lying-in
hospital chapter. a for which Bloom designs in his head in sports: words poster College a on his version of the 5. That licit root to do and meanings.
pares
The
sixteenth
bees. the holm-oak. back through many words with law. among is Ailm. and at the hub he would repeated put an Art the word college. the lost Eden. the yew. or the fir. restraining our culture arose. words having goes deep. phabetic is Eadha. used as among many armature or blueprint to it not only be for the work. protector of sleep eighteenth from which bows are made. This is Circe's signal chapter. Joyce was attracted cause it is it extends an invisible Irish but also because forest archaically over his over the whole novel with Dante's selva tenting cityscape. which is associated with the mating of hieros gamos of Stephen and Bloom in this chapter has yet to be but we can see how the symbolism was commanded by the al
correspondence. tree of resurrection.
is Ruis. and it is I am indebted to Robert Graves' The White Goddess for many details cerning the mythological significance of individual letters of this alphabet. The seventeenth the poplar. which blooms at the spring equinox. as Vico thought. until we get back to the forest floor.The Dowell's
thirteenth chapter.* and graves. Walpurgis a ritual death and resurrection. Calypso's magically trees. the hope of new beginnings. teaching. This is Gerty Mac of the tree alerts us to the dimension of more prominent is apt to go unnoticed themes. Europe from which If to see God in the flash. Hghtning an idea of God's benevolence. and the clos of this chapter. up the sacred acorns of Zeus. 85 * con
. the caused man. tree of childbirth. Bloom solicits ads for a newspaper. collecting?colleg?re. is one of ing symbol freedom The wood This he from bondage. and the
scheme of alphabetical trees. This is a nicely modern design for 1904. thereby the forest of oscura. the heather. The explained. is Idho. or at least pre nacht. He would put wheel Chapter large bicycle poster. is Onn. and the weirdness
superstition which The fourteenth
the tree of witches. with its secular communion of cocoa.

as Joyce indicated Jehovah. geometrical shapes. The has a love of kidneys cooked moreover. and it is the chapter's corresponding 86
. their effectiveness. Man's is in trouble. chapter a choice. and an awful restlessness Hfe of the people.
the past can speak. Life at is dying. between can allow weave of Joyce to correspondences By asking what decorum his reahstic prose. so. to famiHes culture has thus far progressed animal whose Hving panionable saw. as does and there is the oak Hob. wherein Nouveau up like poster Bloom cycHst is doubled a cod in a moment is that the fetal cyclist pot Never mind for the Stephen. Ulysses darkened to disturb the inert. "Mr. Joyce's So Joyce.
is a to the zodiacal position of Bloom's breakfast correspondence kidney the sun on June 16th. If the success of man is as a poHtical. or Rob. strong. that achievement of humanity Joyce family idea of God. because he burns it. not a radical idea that Bloom god." "except that feller he gave stories elegant. shaped his poems nothing he originated. and that given a as was to become by Calypso. begins was written 1914 and 1921. It design accompHshed connections is Robin Goodfellow's Hub has viconian with phalHc Maypole. in cities.a is redesigning. He told the stories men had told over and over. voice are we listening word Whose again: college. He is an instrument through which is not history. com past. man. we come to the depths such intricate obscurity through and upon the principle of of the novel impHed by these correspondences. Hke ("He says he has beat them Shakespeare Nora Joyce said when the Wake was being written. though. it is a sacrifice to his former god in organ. to stand him in good stead. Homer. a mature and and that the sunburst design Bloom prefers is Bloom himself. train our ears to hear it. He gave Shakespeare") for greatest needed them the rhythm and integrity of narrative which they
resonance. all. It is a It is a ghostly voice. is a man. god. like Homer's. level goes on pretty much as in the bronze age. his idea of the state is in trouble. he will defiantly Ulysses tempted. just symbols of this fourth will and will all support the flow from this innocent statement. Leopold Bloom ate with reHsh the inner organs of beasts and fowls" our sentence that introduces is the Dickensian who. voice speaking along with the mimicry out of we know. typological Ulysses. have come from his would choose to be a man. Stephen's prayer at the end of the Portrait. who received to? That of the Old Artificer. paralyzed. dates that end a world. and we must poet's as far as of the prose voice. god's acorn-gathering I think. Bloom's is as archaic as the forest of Europe. sport with spurt and disperse. Ulysses' divinity possible in the bronze age you are what you ambrosia and drinking nectar: eating
eat. nay.

Bloom Bovary. Greek.
Kidney. is Bloom. saw that Flaubert's most beautiful but accuracy Joyce with prophetic was La tentation de Saint Antoine. of a is his existence.
something
Hke belly-pod. is a uterine creature. The oldest identifiable by temples are the subterranean the world earth-hives of Malta.
is the vagina. saying her first word in the novel. sniffing herself. The the work's the longest in the book. "Mrkgnao. of Edwardian skirts and Molly under the bed inside of hats. the symboHc least read masterpiece. served in her feeders. the next. its Faust among into Hades. Bloom does not even known his own disgust for her. as a as Charles Hn of the century. Krafft-Ebing as l'homme moyen a sensuel?oll of these ing Jew. all kidney-shaped. Joyce follows mediaeval in deriving the name "Anthony" from the Greek for flower. is Joyce's Temptation." and the chapter extends in itself between visions remote and time. ant fat and snug. the innards. we have missed seeing that this grand with a swan from fog: with a man named Antonio emerging begins 87 so many
. its descent of Orpheus great the witches. Because where we ment are in stage directions. and probably last out the century. the Greek for which chapter's symbol. the fastnesses covers. His name. and Ogygia means the ancient place. Nor of a maiden farm in Palestine. Circe chapter. roles have been richly pondered. Jerusalem. Antoine?would Bloom's guises. Joyce specified. Bloom the anti-hero has become a cHch?." a queen is Bloom's disillusioned This Calypso-Molly view of womankind. or Demeter. and places darkly inward: the jakes. the second Chap as Bouvard-P?cuchet. Anthony?Flaubert's
in the intensified be the one that has most poignantly fifty years of the book's existence. bowels. so little or her husband Eve that she whorishly tucks herself understanding the tempter's letter under her pillow. does Bloom know that his vision of a model with a zither. that of St. Here man worshipped and Homer may the primeval Cybele. desert blossoming like the rose. and statement that would as a it into Ulysses of prime symbolic worked configuration import. have based his knowledge of Ogygia for means the hider. after all. though Joyce lets us see it. is "fertile field. a toad close by her ear. tradition rather than good Bloom." less articu lately than her alter ego the cat had said. deeply Hebraic happier Utopian longing a resurrected a virtuous Isaiah's for an ideal Molly. as Dublin Walter Mitty. She is a vain then. fantasia of themes. as the true Existential Christian. anthos. "Mn. on what he had heard of Malta. Calypso and selfish. of its symbolic correspondences move do not expect them.
in the heroic
age
of English. Of all etymology seem to St. Penelope. demanding Molly.the scheme meant The
he wrote
out for Linati. the space kidneys. as the Wander case history.

like Venus. They are masks of Bloom. its god). dies his spiritual death in this chapter. who has portion enough of Ste their genius. serving mass as always bread and wine are concealed (the phen in the stanza of Omar Khayyam which he tries to illustrate with gestures ). is his temptation is our sense of living in a world. much as Ezra Pound rewrote his rewriting Hugh as the so that we would to Sextus Propertius. inheritors of the EnUghten of the saint. the voices of the world's parHaments left at their in museums. as statement derives from Flaubert's of the ultimate Bloom Anthony et P?cuchet. Bloom is the age's derer. the ibis Thoth. first generation the world's if they want to. ter. however. and has besides Ulysses' moly. St. in Bloom as St. the multus of that shouter in the street. Anthony champions death of the spirit. sense in which the world consumers invites us deeper and deeper into mat all. Selwyn Mauberley Homage one version or the other. a girl standing a inventor of Ste that she resembled bird. a unit of the traffic along the Nevsky portrait or Grafton Street. Siren. her skirt rucked up so once before. magic flower. Prospekt. and in another sense. Boom. which he has seen land. in Bloom as God. Joyce slays the Stephen Ded phen alus within himself. archetype of the sterile artist. epiphany important of Vico's fourth age) in the newspaper (the daily Odyssey pears betrayed to be what Stephen is revealed a error?he guessed God by typographical : thunder: L.of stubborn faith and of art over the and Orpheus. is Old Ire He. which spectators and to shape it into significant we have the mastery form or not. If there is high comedy the Boulevard Raspail. Calypso. wading writing. of its loss of coordinates. of its pro Flaubert's is a 88
first book was
. his last Bouvard of the Tentation. whichever to be shaped by god strategy Ulysses agreeing chooses. tabHshed soon after the publication a in the workingman's hands at sixpence useful and upHfting knowledge to in short. El. female matter That yes at the end of the novel is matter's or governor. or Penelope. enters next. art attractively the wisdom of the arranged doorsteps daily. from Bouvard pHght to see and hear ment and the French Revolution. too. in the next than his astounding he ap where chapter. She is Circe. The Tentation understand is the modern world's first statement of its directionlessness. there is eloquent prophecy The Anthony. his Eurydice in the sea. groaned everything
evolve. or Molly. is an Orpheus whose Eurydice Gummy Granny herself. boom! was (with a hint from Vico) always If in this last phase of a cycle that began in the bronze age (Zeus Thun the unum. is his own soul. the man two thousand years of civilization volume). whether assent to form. es in paperback books Books were available ages (translated) (Penguin to put the classics and all of Ulysses. is more that in many ways stands forth in an epiphany Bloom.
which
the Tentation. man is man's god. et P?cuchet.

he is self-contained. is opaque to him. can trace Bloom's except that Joyce has given it poetic order. their computer-aimed trajectory to slip its to add a cubit uninformed and P?cuchet. au-dessous des milliards de milliards de "Descends de la terre pendant our astronauts si?cles. terrified. The ideas of Fourier Bloom and in his mind. Bouvard by facts. soHtude and the adora tion of God fulfilled his being. and newspapers learned from books he is a a is solicitous about the he Jewish CathoHc Protestant Agnostic. symbolic energy nor invisibilities that epiphanize punning images and complex meanings. distracting. What philosophers. were Hferating choices and versions of course. He is graduate of the university enHghtenment This comic surface of Bloom would be glorious. like Van Gogh he believes Marx flicker that a home medical in he believes calis improve the national hygiene. that It is this Temptation Joyce's phantasma us that all the adventures of Bloom have been temptations (only half the adventures of Homer's and that an alternative title to hero were). lying-in of as woman whose name he remembers and Purefoy.can with reality. and unable are see St. Anthony. so Bloom's is neither the words pening reality nor the are released through (which invariably parodies). Anthony at all. jamais tu n'arriveras au fond. for Joyce hides it Hke a Heraclitian there nor the principle. to their height by thought. We appreciate grim is carried aloft by the the end of the Tentation. of St. sex is underwear. it blends in when we can free the pattern from the background with which but all these energies with each other. through travel. a of life. professors. but all together. But he never saw this reality. cooperating camouflage. of St. where Anthony agreement is Devil and lectured on modern physics and scientific naturaHsm. for the Devil veiled it with monsters. senses is What Bloom and deflecting. His education has melted. alternately Beaufoy is a dictionary of the age's mythology. a nor the space between. Irish home rule. people are capricious world forces. The idle. special trams for funerals. As the elbow is neither the joined ends of bones. and ragbag anarchic. We thoughts a page in strict as to Freud's of conformity they zigzag down disciphne and even supply Bloom's next thought as surely as we linked association. he has no friends. and thenics. can a Homeric formulaic phrase. and the flesh. Bloom. Ulysses might have been The Temptations shows The reaHty before Anthony was the empty desert. reality is before Bloom is harder to see. complete weaves same time into Bloom's interior monologue At the and its Joyce 89
. abstract event hap weightless. planned parenthood. of symbols. guide will advertising. Hgatures. Anthony. which we transparencies through and so is Bloom." is down? Anyway "Which way "Down?" says the Devil. the wealth of knowledge he has is in disarray." So would feel. on the page in an arm. temptation.

stable to the birth of Christ (the named Pure Faith). The slaughter is within Molly's monologue. interjacent recites in one disguise I suspect absolutely Joyce constantly) stantly (and In with or another the adventures this there is each chapter's of Ulysses. at and in the blood-red Mediterranean and other red flowers. coloring for instance. the exception of pride. We can best understand a sacrifice it seems to symboHze: logue by grasping how strangely primitive an of blood. sense. for good measure. But then he had not read Ulysses. that need to be looked into by the schol There are other correspondences or sacrifice. endlessly repeating to hearts. Chapter Chapter corresponds three Magi of the first chapter are there. and he mind can follow his metaphysical We phen. And then. canceling does he sing own logic. for which he substitutes to two at is the ability to pay attention Genius. rehearse over and over the sins themselves. It is with Molly's (as with Penelope's ) utterly archaic spilling in the consent that the suitors are slain. animals. and a baby is born to a woman and exterior. I suspect.?Umost con narrative prose other threads of correspondences. And with replay experience in its interior musings. in his abstruse thoughts is quite an accompHshed (though Joyce in the poet But what critic has calls him "a gentleman wordsmith"). Go and look to make so skilled in sarcasm that we expect his words and see what sense can be made of them. things once. Then it pleased over with correspondences figured a Toten sins into the seven deadly to allegorize the characters doing Joyce the words. 4 corresponds 14 to Revelation. that every chapter ars. so is his mind. clear. all of them. In and out of this reflect Homer's matter. This last chapter clearly transformation sunset. in many senses. all the other matter with its pecuHar tint. in the afternoon's in Molly's menstrual flow (negating is reflected lust). Why to MulHgan mean? does his telegram to Bloom? What of Lincoln" "Hugh 90
. Joyce makes with all of them in the chapter. a meekness on Bloom's part. special symboHsm. question chapter and its gore bow and the string. the poppies of the sea. The arrows are released preceding the opposite forces of the and answer being (Ithaka). those details which geography is then runs the This complexity list of the adventures. tanz around Bloom. is charmingly interior Bloom's dialogue. All his words at them. for instance. Kafka remarked. of a is a mass. the great lyricism of Molly's mono different kind. conversationaHst we hear her say) is not an articulate but can (what Molly now look again at Ste the genius of Proust. Ulysses Stephen tells parables Throughout and none of them make any sense. and interfering with themselves their are self-collapsing systems. the Apocalyptic as to Genesis. He is so eloquent of thought and drums. In the Hades Joyce has had to find in Dublin chapter. Ask yourself why Stephen says what he does. Scribbledehobble dared to notice that when he opens his mouth nonsense flies out? or riddles or conun Nonsense.

says is not the naturaHstic one. that gives the work its coherence and its profoundest harmony. bert. than in them in relation to the considering move in imaginative away from the word as principal writing today?that toward the word as reality. inarticulate of mind. and thinks out loud to she talks to herself they speak. compromisingly subjective. unity. as an un of art itself. and.
C R I T I C I SM
/ MARJORIE
G. I think." the "thematic design. It is rather the inner voice of the novel.
much
at this way. cooperate. some forty years later. the poetic voice of the symbols. as as the voice of Shakespeare. articulate of mind. Nora Barnacle's letters are as Bloom do his speeches is articulate Hke Molly's monologue as Joyce's city-dwelling habits are like
Bloom's. and make complement speaks in three voices at a poet once. uncompromisingly but epiphany objective. For Molly mind and speech are the same to think.What
in the Circe chapter mean? is inarticulate of speech. encyclopedic a what the poet himself period of sixty years.* * Read at Princeton University as the Eberhardt Faber Lecture for 1973. written "major form" of the Cantos."2 called disparagingly To understand Pound's gradual shift from what Williams called "the word as symbol toward the word as 91
. that the important voice in Ulysses can stand beside that of masters Ibsen. Opposites opposites meet." or the frequently as if Pound's over poem. said Heraclitus. I am suggesting. Stephen of speech. Tolstoy. R. Fuller. WilHam Carlos WilHams appeared "A criticism of Pound's Cantos could remarked with characteristic insight: not be better concerned. said Blake. Together a poem that each other."1 symbol This was in 1931 but today. ineluctably. Buckminster involves at least two things. the work of one mind and one epiphany sensibiHty. could be deciphered by "an Aquinas-map. PERLOFF
Pound and Rimbaud: The Retreat from Symbolism
When A Draft of XXX Cantos in 1930. as Hamlet when he speaks is a distraught prince of Denmark. enigmatic Stephen Dedalus. critics are still talking all too of the "central symbolism. and Flau Joyce's Jacobsen. and thus as inabiHty boldly stands forth not only an of kinds of life in our time. which then. the novel becomes a Looked accepts soHpsistic poem which its to know another mind. Is not Joyce in many ways more like Bloom than Stephen? Professor Ellmann has found a real Martha Clifford.